Smart Business Magazine, May 2019

56 Smart Business Cleveland May 2019 INVESTORS DEALMAKERS ENTREPRENEURS As the Latin proverb says audentes fortuna juvat or fortune favors the bold Ive never accomplished my goals by playing it safe JAYNE JUVAN CHAIR MERGERS ACQUISITIONS AND SECURITIES CAPITAL MARKETS PRACTICE GROUPS TUCKER ELLIS NEVER STOP TRYING LEARNING As Grossman assesses the evolution of his dealmaking style he cant point to any one specific person as a role model When we decided to embark on an acquisition strategy to support our growth goals I spent over a year meeting with several businesses who had acquired businesses in the past Grossman says I wanted to understand their philosophy I met with several investment bankers as well as private equity companies to learn about their approaches Ultimately this helped me drive a framework with respect to our approach He has been a member of Entrepreneurs Organization for 10 years and often leverages EO when wanting to learn more about successful acquisitions and integrations EOs mission is to engage leading entrepreneurs to learn and grow Grossman says There was such a desire among my fellow members and sponsors to help me achieve the learning I would need to be able to properly develop a strategy that would ultimately be successful and scalable Grossman has yet to develop a specific team that is focused exclusively on dealmaking and relies on people to wear multiple hats in helping to facilitate execution For example our CFO does his day job plus he oversees corporate development which is responsible for finding target companies he says He is also responsible for the front end discussions and financial diligence for potential targeted companies Finally he took on the responsibility for being the lead project manager who oversees the integration phase over the first six months of an acquisition The ultimate goal is to create a dedicated M A team We want to build out specific roles tied to corporate development and financial diligence as well as project managers to build customized strategy for integration and a project coordinator to manage the integration phase he says We also want to have a small technology team whose focus is to effectively map data over to our platform and properly execute on the system implementation In the meantime hell continue pushing forward toward that 1 billion goal benchmark We are very fortunate that we operate with a very strong culture and that is helping us to fail forward to learn and grow without our acquirees wanting to flee and run away Grossman says

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